Food Stories

I’ve been writing about food for almost 20 years now and I haven’t been sick of it for five minutes. Food is such a rich topic: it’s history, culture, family, sustenance, health, business, community, environment and even philosophy.

Food stories can be epic tales of migration, cool insights into technology, inspiring stories of persistence and discovery or simple insights into daily life. Food is a way of knitting together family and friends and can be shared via narrative, recipes, photos, video, audio, on the street or around a table. I love communicating about food in all these different ways: it’s rich, deep and endlessly fascinating and I learn something new with every story I write.

Chefs and best-selling cookbook authors Allan Campion, 54, and Michele Curtis, 49, were in a relationship for 17 years. They separated 13 years ago but continue to co-parent and work together. Four years ago, Allan told Michele he was gay.

Chris Lucas, the entrepreneur behind some of Melbourne’s hottest laneway restaurants is moving to Sydney and luring one of the harbour city’s best chef south. Will his sizzle translate, or will he have egg on his face?

It was Ottolenghi’s first yo-yo that did it. Israeli-born, London-based chef Yotam Ottolenghi had never encountered the classic Australian biscuit, a double-layered melting moment with buttercream filling. One fateful day in 2006, recently arrived Melbourne recruit Helen Goh gently lamented that there were no biscuits among the patisserie cakes at Ottolenghi’s Islington cafe. A yo-yo or an Anzac and a cup of tea was exactly what she hankered for after a hard, hand-blistering shift chopping butternut pumpkins.

I was so happy that my work as a food journalist meant I was sent to interview Israeli chef Eyal Shani. This story first appeared in Good Food, and was swiftly followed by a crazy day shooting videos with Eyal. If you’re a Dani Valent Cooking subscriber, you can watch our Hummus adventures here. Meantime, enjoy my story about the man behind Miznon.

French chef Adeline Grattard’s Blue Cheese & Cherry Bao is one of those mind-bending dishes that has captured the minds of culinary fans around the world. I first heard about it in the Netflix Chef’s Table documentary, which devotes an episode to the sensitive, passionate French chef and her Paris restaurant Yam’tcha, run with her Chinese husband Chi Wah Chan. Yam’tcha plucks from the French and Chinese canons to create a truly individual cuisine: fusion food is tricky to get right but it’s expressed so beautifully by Grattard and particularly in these buns. I was fortunate to visit Yam’tcha on a recent trip to Paris and you can see below how delighted I was to eat this concoction in situ.

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